The annual gathering of artisan British bicycle builders took place in Bristol back in April on 15th to 17th.  Bespoked is now 6 years old and it is safe to say the 2016 offering built on everything that has gone before.  We were down at the show and grabbed a few snaps of some of our favourite builds.

The gallery features amongst others Condor Cycles; Saffron Frameworks; August Bicycles; Quirk Cycles; Evanson Bike Works; Robin Mather Cycles; Demon Frameworks; Talbot Frameworks; and Winter Bicycles.

Photography by Thom Heald and Jim Holland.

Since its first edition in 2013 the Transcontinental Race has captured the imagination of amateur cyclists looking for the next big challenge. Multi-day, unsupported events like the Transcontinental makes demands that go beyond physical endurance. Riders must be totally self-sufficient on the road, from navigation to finding food and rest and dealing with mechanicals. As I’ve written before on the blog, these races evoke the heroic spirit of early years of road racing far more than the tightly controlled and carefully choreographed professional peloton. Yet races like the Transcontinental are also thoroughly modern affairs. Riders can make free use of the most modern bike technology and the very latest lightweight bikepacking gear, they are tracked in real time using the latest satellite technology and their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram dispatches from the road add texture and emotion, making for a thoroughly post-modern way to watch bike race.

But how to make the step up from riding traditional road racing, audaxing or sportive-riding to take on a challenge like the Transcontinental? Or what if you like the sound of testing yourself on an long, unsupported bike race but don’t have a fortnight to spare to ride 2,500 miles from Belgium to Turkey? That’s where the Valleycat comes in. Dreamed up by Transcontinental Race organisers Mike Hall and Anna Haslock, a Valleycat is “a cross breed of the Alleycat and the traditional Brevet”. The way it works is that at the start – and not a minute before – riders are given a list of control points and have to plan their own route to reach them, in any order they like. According to Hall, “it’s not a race, it’s a game”. The first Valleycat was a one-day event in South Wales last October. Valleycat 2 was a weekend affair in mid-Wales and I went along to check it out.

The barn at Ty Mawr farm

Valleycat HQ was on a small sheep farm on the western slopes of the Cambrian mountains, a few miles inland from Aberystwyth and riders began to rock up on Friday afternoon. A pair of army mess tents provided a makeshift kitchen and sleeping area for riders who’d come without their own shelter. At 7 o’clock on Friday evening everyone gathered in an old stone barn to listen to Mike’s briefing where he revealed the nine control points, scattered across 600 square miles (1500 square km) of the wildest and most remote landscapes south of the Scottish Highlands. Riders collected their satellite trackers and a hush of deep concentration quickly descended on the barn as riders got to work planning their routes.

Some riders worked out their routes on computers...

...others preferred good old-fashioned paper maps

Handwritten cue sheets for a Welsh adventure

Each rider carries a satellite tracking device for real-time tracking on the web

As the temperature dipped towards freezing two hardy riders set of into the night, with the rest enjoying hanging out by the campfire or getting an early night before a dawn start the next day. With riders fanning out across mid-Wales the trackers showed most were riding a longer northern loop first then return to HQ for the night before mopping up the remaining controls on the Sunday. A few rode continuously or grabbed a few hours rest in a bivvy bag.

Volunteer super-chefs Liz and Rob (pictured) kept the coffee brewing...

...and fried a seemingly endless supply of eggs

Valleycat organiser Anna Haslock and her bottomless pot of chilli

Valleycat organiser and ultra-endurance vedette Mike Hall

Mike’s placement of the control points invited that riders take on some of the most iconic cycling roads in Wales including the famed Devil’s Staircase and the dreaded Bwlch y Groes, also known as Hellfire Pass. The location of the controls tempted riders to take shortcuts on unsurfaced paths, from forest trails through towering conifers to old drovers roads across the open moors. A shortcut can save time but increases the risk of tyre damage and there’s always a chance that what looks at first like a viable unsurfaced track will deteriorate into a precipitous rocky path or unrideable quagmire.

Ian Barrington of Wildcat Gear hitting the road

Looking good: fresh tarmac on the Tregaron mountain road...

...not quite so fresh, but still there...

...anyone for rough stuff?

Riders returned to the farm in varying degrees of exhaustion and exultation. All had been wowed of the power and beauty of the scenery, for most of the riders to this part of Wales was terra incognita. Mike believes that having to plan and navigate your own route means you engage more with the landscape than if you’re riding a fixed course, either by following an audax routesheet or the black and yellow arrows of a sportive. Most cursed the occasional wrong turn and the extra miles they’d had to ride as a consequence and one rider maintained that the first day of Valleycat 2 was a harder than any single day of last year’s Transcontinental.

Craig Dolwin was first home after visiting all 9 controls - 345 kilometres and 6,600 metres of climbing in just under 24 of hours of riding - on a Brooks B17, naturally

A campfire kept bodies warm and spirits high

Besides being a uniquely challenging test of body and mind, what made Valleycat 2 stand out from other bike events was the atmosphere back at the farm, from the good food in the makeshift kitchen to the campfire that burned late into the night. People came to ride big miles but it was as much about enjoying good company on a hill farm in the middle of Wales. Whether you’re planning to race the Transcontinental or just want to see a whole lot of Wales in a weekend, Valleycat 3 on 16-18 September might be just the ticket.

The Chaps over at Sven Cycles have been darlings of the handmade bicycle scene for many years, but this year a rather special project crossed their path, the Forager.  It is fair to say it is something of a unique machine, designed for the British foodie Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to take out on his trips to the forest to forage for wild foods.  With inbuilt cooking system and numerous compartments to carry home the plunder, no wonder it was an award winner at Bespoked.

With the bicycle now on display at our flagship store in London, B1866, we decided to catch up with Darron from Sven and find out a little more…

So can you give us an overview of this bicycle?  It looks a little unusual, what was the objective of the
build?

The forager was inspired by a classic trade bike with an over all aesthetic is based on a Classic Land Rover Defender .  The bike needed to be used on a variety of terrain so needed to be robust and practical . The frame design was based on a classic cross frame with an oversized head tube to help reduce lateral flex on the bike when loaded up.

What do you feel is the most innovative element of the bicycle?

There is no real innovation in the bike but well selected parts and a very considered design make the bike. As a finished product it all just works together .

Have you been out riding with Hugh?  If so how is his hill climbing?

We have been for a quick ride Hugh did make it up the steep  track from the farm ok , We will see how it goes when we get some proper foraging Autumn.  Hopefully we can enjoy a few meals from Hugh’s kitchen too.

Did making a bicycle for something of an English Institution, in Hugh, make you more nervous?

I always have a slight apprehension for anyone I build a bike for, but as this had such a specific brief it was a bit more pressured.  When the bike was ready for delivery we were very pleased with the end result and would have kept it if he didn’t like it.  So we were happy with the job.

Will we be seeing the Forager on the television?

I hope so Hugh is very busy with his campaign on disposable cups. So we will have a catch up at the spring fair, hoping to get something booked in for the autumn foraging season.

Have you got any other celebrity bikes in the pipeline?

We have two other projects with two well known graffiti artist that should come together later this year , we are always on the look out for intriguing collaborations that push us out of our comfort zone.  It is fair to say the graffiti artists have slightly different needs to Hugh.

—————–

The Forager is currently on display at B1866 in Covent Garden.  Make you way down to see this unique bicycle in the flesh.  It will be these until mid-May.

Cycling used to be a little bit deviant. We used to wait – a few of us – at traffic lights on sunny days, and alone on rainy ones. People on bikes were often a bit different, or at least from the margins: environmentalists, aspiring pro riders, people with little money or, at the very least, a very British type of eccentric. In London that’s started to change – slowly at first, and now ever faster. The city’s residents have started to demand air quality that doesn’t kill them, transport options that don’t cost an arm and a leg, and – very often – simply roads to cycle on safely. Cycling now says no more about a Londoner’s identity than the fact that they want a nice, convenient way to get around their city.

In turn, London cycle campaigns have begun to point out that Amsterdam and Copenhagen were not always pro-bike places, and Seville and San Francisco have also done plenty to show that pro-bike cities don’t have to be a northern European thing. So now those campaigns face new questions. If cyclists are no longer only those people that are a little bit deviant, or at least quirky, will they still be the same sort of people who’ll sit down to block a busy road in order to demand better provisions for bikes? We should be able to take good, safe bicycle infrastructure for granted, but if people actually do, will we ever be given it, or will we lose the things we’ve fought for? The cycling community used to be so strong partly because it was small. We always wanted it to grow, and now it has, so what comes next for bicycles in our city, and do we lose our community?

Londoners on Bikes was a response to some of these quandaries. It is a voting bloc of cyclists, telling the candidates for Mayor of London that people want to ride bikes, and that those people are also voters. Riding a bicycle in a city built for cars (despite the fact that only 30% of Londoners own a car) was always itself a small political act, but it should never have been a dangerous one. Nobody should have to face the news that somebody they love is at hospital, and not at home, just because they chose to cycle to work. More than that, nobody should have to sit on a cramped, expensive bus or train carriage, when they’d rather be cycling but are afraid of being harassed, aggressed or injured for doing so.

There were regular cycling charities who championed these same goals, but – as charities – their hands were always tied at elections; they were barred from being as political or as determined for change as many cyclists wanted. Londoners on Bikes is a group of everyday Londoners who, at election time, give up evenings for the belief that a city built for bikes and people would be a better one to live in, for everybody. Londoners on Bikes give out fliers at junctions, attend hustings, write to mayoral candidates and make the case for an improved city that does more to accommodate cycling. Riding a bicycle in an urban area, whether London or elsewhere, used to feel like a tiny act of rebellion. These days when you pull away from the lights on a spring afternoon, it’s more like you’re joining a revolution … one in which everyone is on the same side.

It used to seem to me that cyclists were the world’s idealists. So if more people are cycling, does that mean: that your average cyclist has become more normal and less idealist, or that (my preferred understanding) everyone is an idealist at heart, and the bicycle helps bring it out of them. Is the bicycle an idealism-generating contraption, perhaps if only for its ability to show us how quick, efficient and graceful we can be, whereas the rest of our lives we are required simply to plod about. The Italian cyclist, Fausto Coppi, was always said to be somewhat awkward and hunkered off of the bicycle, whereas on it his pedalling cadence and ease was thought of as a motion set in perfect proportions. From my own experience, cycling across continents, the bicycle made the world around me feel so gently humbling, and always very human. On a different scale, the same happens when cycling in a city … we need our cities to be human, and in urban spaces that were built for cars, cycling will always be political.

You can sign up and show your support for Londoners on Bikes at:

http://www.londonersonbikes.org/

Girona first began attracting cyclists in the 1990s when professionals such as George Hincapie chose the city for its mild climate, quiet roads and convenient location between mountains, sea and the international airport at Barcelona. But it was when the dreaded Lance Armstrong bought an apartment that the city was really put on the cycling map and its now a mecca for pro cyclists, some permanently relocating with their families, others simply enjoying a few months of winter training in the hills around the city.

It’s now the base of so many pro riders that you can’t turn a corner without bumping into someone recognisable; it was almost pro cyclist bingo every time we went out for a ride and I felt like such a fan girl, getting excited when they’d nod and smile at us out on the road. In the city itself we saw Giant Alpecin riders sipping Café con leche and eating Hummingbird cake at La Fábrica and Dimension Data riders relaxing in the sun on Plaça de la Independencia. At Girona Cycle Centre you can even buy the pro riders’ unwanted kit, marked with the name of the rider selling it – they had some really nice stuff and cheap too, but realistically, I wouldn’t have worn it so I had to turn away.

There are a great many fantastic routes that start and end in Girona so it’s not at all difficult to ride something different every day, selecting the a ride that perfectly fulfils your needs. The following four routes are available to download by clicking the link and visiting Wikiloc, where you can grab the GPX file to upload to you cycle computer of choice. But a word of caution: I’d suggest you use these routes as a guide because if you follow every single turning on the GPX file you might end up retracing our random or long winded searches for coffee stops, or minor detours. Have fun!

It all started on the top floor of an East London car park – the 5th floor.

Originally a meeting point for ‘Tuesday Night Tricks’, where people tried ride backwards on fixed gear bikes, it quickly became a focal point for the London ‘fixie scene’. We would meet up, drink Red Stripe, talk aerospokes and ride around London.

Six of us quickly became friends and started a blog going by the name of ‘The 5th Floor’. As the London fixed gear scene rapidly grew, so did we – organising rides, racing alley cats and finally riding track bikes properly (in a velodrome).

6 years on from messing around on a car park roof, we’re now a team of 25 riders based out of London and New York. Together we ride, race, drink coffee and eat pizza. For us, it’s just as important we remain a group of good friends having fun on bikes, as it is racing and competing.

5thLDN is made up of myself (Luke), Rudy (co-founder), Alec, Alex, George, Pasquale, Raffaele and Reece – and at the end of last year, we were hugely excited to welcome five women to the team; Sophie, Aoife, Adeline, Clare and Petra.

We came from a fixed gear background and that’s still at our heart. Track riding remains a focus for many and the Red Hook Crit is big event in our calendar. As a team though, we now compete in wide a range of disciplines; road races and crits in the summer, CX and track in the winter and adventure/touring/gravel when we can.

This season, our London team are incredibly honoured to be partnering with Brooks and racing on their new C13 saddle. We’ve already put it to the test on muddy CX circuits, Belgian cobbles and cold crits – all handled with comfort and speed.

So what do we have planned for 2016? As mentioned, Red Hook is a big one and we’ll have riders racing in New York, London, Barcelona and Milan. The girls have just signed up for the Tour de Kaernten, a 6 day stage race in Austria and we’ll be competing in the Tour of Sussex, a 5 stage team race down South. As well as that, there’ll be the regular crits, road races, track meets and the annual 5th ‘training camp’ – last year we spent a spectacular, but incredibly tough, 8 days in the Dolomite Mountains. Of course, in between all the above, there will be plenty of coffee, pizza and beer.

Bring on more #ontherivet in 2016!

It meant people could travel further and faster than ever before. The only question was where to go, and this turned out to be quite a conundrum. For a start the roads were in a terrible state and road maps were years out of date and little more than sketches that failed to show if a road was bowling green smooth, boneshakingly rocky or an impassable quagmire. It was therefore fortunate that the same advances in engineering that gave birth to the bicycle were also revolutionising map-making. What’s more, many of the new maps hitting the market were designed specifically to help cyclists explore the countryside.

As well as showing the quality of the roads, a good cycling map must show where the hills are. Most road maps of the time ignored hills altogether or else depicted them as cartoon-like hillocks reminiscent of the days when medieval map-makers would liven up a large expanse of water by drawing in a few sea monsters. One popular map style of the time was the strip map. These showed a single route in considerable detail but failed to give a sense of the road network as a whole.

A nineteenth century strip map. Beautifully drawn but designed for the wealthy gentleman riding in in a stagecoach than for the independent bicycle traveller

New and improved strip maps for cyclists added elevation profiles, like this one from Germany:

Paul Hildebrand's Radfahrer-Reisebuch: A cyclist's strip map with elevation profile, 1895

One clever cartographer combined elements of the elevation strip map with a standard road atlas by adding tiny elevation profiles alongside the roads.

Cycling map of Switzerland showing roads with elevations, 1900. Click to enlarge.

Detail showing road climbs in the Swiss Alps (click to enlarge)

But the really big step forward was made by Scottish map-makers John Bartholomew. Its “Reduced Survey Maps for Tourists and Cyclists”, first published at the height of the 1890s bike boom, are a triumph of cartographic genius. They took the British government’s own Ordnance Survey maps and made them both easier to read and half the size. The most obvious way these maps stood out from the crowd was the way they showed elevation using a richly coloured scale. The technique of layer tinting dates back to a hand painted map of central Italy by Leonardo Da Vinci yet it had never been used in commercial map-making.

Bartholomew's half inch series really brings the landscape to life and makes planning a bike trip a pleasure - click to enlarge

Colour was not the only thing ‘Barts’ maps got right. The scale of a half inch to the mile (or 1:126,720) is perfect for anyone travelling by bicycle. It is detailed enough to show every road and track, as well as pubs, hotels and local points of interest, yet large enough to give an immediate sense of the lie of the land. One map sheet covers an area a hundred miles across – enough for a few days touring. Compare this with the Ordnance Survey’s current 1:50,000 Landranger maps. These are stunning pieces of cartography but a week’s touring means carrying a dozen map sheets. Another advantage was that Barts maps were continuously updated, not just with official survey data but with reports crowd-sourced from cyclists themselves, through a formal arrangement with the Cyclists’ Touring Club. For decades the maps sold in their millions.

As well as viewing them at the excellent online archive of the National Library of Scotland I have a small but growing collection of Barts maps (there were so many sold that they’re not rare or expensive). They are beautiful objects in themselves but they are also a portal to a lost era, a two dimensional time capsule from the last days of Britain before the motor car changed everything. Over the course of a few decades the car turned towns and cities inside out, filled quiet roads with streams of traffic, shrank perceptions of both time and space and disconnecting travellers from the realities of the landscape. To look at a Barts map is to see the country as you might cycle it, as Ernest Hemingway put it, sweating up the hills and coasting down them. I confess a feeling of nostalgia, or perhaps more accurately, saudade, for this golden era, even though it ended long before I was born.

Compare the rich detail of a Barts half inch map with Google Maps - click to enlarge

My small but growing collection

As successful family businesses of the late Victorian era John Bartholomew of Edinburgh and J.B. Brooks of Birmingham have a lot in common. Both excelled in engineering and design, blending traditional craftsmanship with the latest manufacturing technologies. Both made products that people found to be highly functional, extremely beautiful and unexpectedly intimate. A well worn map is as personal and individual as a broken in saddle and can it be purely coincidental that the only other product of the 1890s bike boom that stands comparison with Bartholomew’s half inch map is the Brooks’s B17. No other bicycle component has remained in production for as long, nor matched the B17′s immense popularity and Brooks is still cranking out its flagship B17s in its Smethwick factory to this day.

The Brooks B17: a design from the 1890s that's still going strong

Sadly, Barts half inch maps did not fare so well. Demand shifted to less detailed maps aimed at motorists, and Bartholomew faced fierce competition from the state-owned Ordnance Survey’s excellent leisure maps. In the end, Bartholomew discontinued the half inch / 1:100,000 series that was once its pride and joy. This has left Britain, the country that sparked the very first bicycle boom, without a high quality map at a scale that’s right for cycling, a gap in the market that remains unfilled.

To celebrate a legacy of craftsmanship 150 years in the making, Brooks and Canyon have teamed up to combine tradition and innovation in the Commuter Brooks 150. Based on the recently launched Canyon Commuter 6.0, this special edition model will be limited to just 150 pieces.

As the oldest manufacturer in the bike industry, Brooks has a heritage unmatched by any other bike brand on the planet. While we remain true to our roots, the company’s broad range today is also defined by modern production methods executed with a craftsman’s attention to detail and unmistakeable design, epitomised by Canyon’s release of the “Commuter Brooks 150″.

The aim in producing the Canyon Commuter Brooks 150 was to highlight an inherent connection between tradition and innovation. Canyon’s Commuter range has been widely commended for its modern design and unrivalled practicality and performance for taking on the urban environment, which provided an ideal canvas to realise a Brooks X Canyon collaboration.

Striking copper details immediately stand out across the bike as a hallmark of the Brooks brand. Outfitted with Brooks’ new Cambium C15 Saddle, GP1 150 Grips and Land’s End Rear Pannier, the Commuter Brooks 150 has a timeless look to last a lifetime. With its modern dynamo lights and Gates belt drive, this is the perfect bike for the modern rider who values quality and style.

The limited edition Canyon Commuter Brooks 150 is available from the 4th of April exclusively at Canyon.com.

Meanwhile, tout terrain is already in its 11th year, which is not very long when measured by the time horizons of a company like Brooks. But due to the wealth of innovation they have created in this time, this period feels much longer.  It seems tout terrain has always been there.

The Silkroad Dashing Bikes edition is the touring bike of choice for cycling globetrotters on expedition. The latest generation has been completely redesigned in order to handle the greatest challenges. Almost all components have been modified as part of the redesign. But don’t be surprised if you don’t see the changes at first glance – we still believe that less is more.

The limited edition of the Silkroad can be ordered from the 4th of April at any tout terrain or Brooks dealer.

Stay tuned to the Brooks Blog each month for updates to the Dashing Bikes programme.

Therefore, exactly one week later to the day, I resolved to redeem myself and avenge my finger (specifically my right thumb) by undertaking the exact same ride.

Only this time, I resolved, I would not crash.

I undertook my pre-ride preparations with near religious solemnity and even donned the same stretchy vestements I had worn on that fateful day.  This was partly to acknowledge the significance of the journey I was about to undertake, but it was mostly because they were still sitting there on the drying rack from the week before.  I did, however, select a different bicycle, since I figured bar-end shifters would be easier than STI levers to manipulate with my compromised hand:

This is my travel bike, distinguished by its couplers:

Its wildly inelegant braze-on front derailleur adapter clamp complete with shim:

And of course its mighty tower of unsightly spacers, intentionally bright because I live for nothing more than to offend the Velominati:

See, bike frames come in three sizes:

1) Custom

2) Stock

3) Too good a deal to pass it up so you do whatever to make it work

This bike is a prime example of number three, and it works beautifully, aesthetics be damned.  Its purpose is to be crammed into a suitcase and onto a plane and then emerge in some semblance of rideable condition on the other end.  Indeed, this bike has accompanied me on many journeys, and is every disproportionate inch the World Travel(l)er:

So there you go.

Anyway, given the bike’s grimy appearance it will no doubt surprise you to learn this is after I’ve prepped it for the ride, and here are some thing’s it’s difficult or impossible to do without the thumb of your dominant hand:

–Open Presta valve

–Apply pump chuck to said valve

–Close Presta valve again

–Open and close quick release skewer in order to switch wheels

Fortunately I still had full use of my left hand, but it’s not finely calibrated for bicycle maintenance like my right one is, so I worried that perhaps my skewers weren’t closed properly or my Presta valve torque values were way off.  (Improperly tightened Presta valves in particular can be extremely dangerous.)

Nevertheless, I set off, and while my valves did maintain their integrity another problem soon manifest itself.  See, it was a very cold day, so in order to accommodate my unwieldy splint I’d cunningly slit open the thumb of a pair of worn gloves.  Unfortunately, as soon as I went faster than 5mph the thumb flap blew back, leaving my poor wounded finger to freeze in the wind:

The discomfort was mitigated somewhat by the fact that my thumb was still numb in places, but I could see that in an hour or so this might become a problem.

I live in the Bronx, so by necessity any ride in a northerly direction takes me through our friendly neighbor, the City of Yonkers:

And Yonkers is basically everything above Van Cortlandt Park, which is of course part of New York City:

So when I made a right at the “Welcome to Yonkers” sign I was skirting the very top of the park and New York City–floating above it if you will–and here’s what Van Cortlandt looks like from one of the various Yonkers streets that dead-end into it:

The section of the park that abuts Yonkers is more or less completely neglected, so in a way you’re looking at New York City’s untended backyard.  Come in through our front door and the City of New York looks like this:

Yet slip in through the back fence and the City of New York looks like this:

Hey, it’s no Lady Liberty, but that fire hydrant does radiate a dignity that belies its diminutive stature.

Next I accessed the old railway line that has been converted into a multi-use trail and will spirit you northward through Westchester County and beyond, free from molestation by motor vehicles:

The county is serious about that “No Motor Vehicles” edict too, because anybody with a mind to open that gate and drive on would first have to defeat this forbidding bag lock:

At this point in the Trailway the poor, trash-filled Tibbetts Brook meanders under it, and if you squint it’s almost bucolic:

Almost.

From here Tibbetts Brook continues to flow south, where it enters Van Cortland Park and then heads underground, fulfilling everyone’s low expectations of it by joining the New York City sewer system:

There’s talk of rescuing Tibbetts Brook from the sewer system by “daylighting” it, which sounds great, though I’m pretty confident in saying the ice caps will melt and New York City will be completely submerged before this ever happens.

Heading north onto the Trailway I continued along the brook when, being the keen naturalist I am, I sensed something through the brambles:

So I lay down my bike:

And bravely made my way in:

Shhh!

See that?

Of course you don’t.  You don’t have my trained urban naturalist’s eye.

Okay, look closer.

See it now?

It’s a great blue heron, standing knee deep in sewage:

At least I think it’s a great blue heron.

Hey, what do you want from me?

Returning to my bike, I pressed on:

As you continue northward the Trailway gradually becomes more pleasant:

And instead of following Tibbetts Brook you follow the Saw Mill River.  Second only to the mighty Bronx River in stature around these parts, I stopped to pay homage to it:

Walking along the path I passed under this tiny birdhouse:

This being Westchester I’m sure property taxes on that birdhouse are at least $20,000 a year.

I then stepped out onto the rocks and listened to the babbling of the Saw Mill:

It was then that I had a mystical moment, for the river whispered to me the solution for my frozen thumb.

Use the tape, it whispered.

And I did:

Yes, I took a flap of the tape holding the splint to my finger and stuck it to the glove.  It seemed to be holding too, and I figured that unless at some point I needed the tape to boot my tire I’d be good for the rest of the ride.

And yes, I plan to upgrade to a carbon or titanium splint as soon as possible.

Roughly twelve miles from Van Cortland Park there’s a break in the Trailway by the industrial section of Elmsford, which at the moment I arrived was under a pall:

And it was soon clear to me that a truck had exploded on the highway:

It must have just happened too, because now debris was falling and landing around me with the soft crunching sound of autumn leaves:

The stench of smoke, the wailing of sirens, and the proximity of certain death began to overwhelm me.  By this evening, at the very least a trucker’s wife would be telling her children that their father wouldn’t ever be coming home.  I suddenly felt guilty and self-conscious for standing there and gawking at such misery, and so gloomily I continued on my way.

It was only later that I found out exactly what had happened:

Police say the tractor-trailer was traveling in the westbound lane of I-287, when it experienced mechanical problems that led to a small inferno near Exit 2 in Elmsford.

Officials say the driver escaped the mishap unscathed, but the 41,000 pounds of frozen carrots he was carrying were torched by the fire.

So yeah, not exactly a tragedy, but certainly a dark day for carrots and the people who love them.

Anyway, bearing in mind that at this point I still didn’t know about the carrots, you can imagine I was still feeling a bit doleful when I picked up the Trailway again after running the Elmsford gauntlet:

Though once Elmsford’s safely in your helmet mirror you can leave the Trailway behind if you choose and expect to find actual scenic open roads:

It helps that much of this area is protected as part of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve:

And barns:

And well-endowed horse crossings:

It’s also criss-crossed with streams:

Dotted with old signage:

And striped with lots of tantalizing trails you’re not allowed to ride bikes on:

Though fortunately the roads offer good riding too:

Oh, and our water’s up here, so back off:

Indeed, it’s quite peaceful up here, but since I was technically standing on New York City property I was nearly run over by three yellow cabs, two green ones, and an MTA express bus.

Anyway, you don’t even need to pilfer our water because there’s also free Natty Light:

I’d say it was dropped by a local farmhand, but this is farm-to-table country so I’m sure they wouldn’t be caught dead drinking anything but craft beer.

It was now time to head back towards home, so I dropped down to the river:

And headed onto the Old Croton Aqueduct trail:

The choicest portion of which runs right through these parts:

Discreet rest stops can be difficult on the OCA owing to lots of suburbanites in yoga pants walking Golden Retrievers with bandanas around their necks, but I did find one of these:

Where I discovered that yet another difficult thing to do with a busted thumb is urinate while wearing bib shorts.

Finally, just a few miles from home, I came to the fork in the road where it had all gone wrong on the last ride:

Had we continued straight ahead I’d have arrived home shortly thereafter with ten intact fingers.  But instead we decided to make a left and pick up a particularly scruffy stub of the Old Croton Aqueduct.  I had to make things right again, and the only way to do that was finish what I had started the week before.

So I made the left toward the eerie sentinel’s station:

And past the creepy troll bunker:

My thumb throbbing ominously as I crossed the Rubicon or Styx or Night Ranger or whatever it’s called.

And there it was, the final section of trail that had been my undoing:

It may look deceptively tame, but before long I was at the dreaded spot where I had crashed:

Just kidding, it was this small patch of rocks:

One second I had been flying along and congratulating myself on adding some “bonus dirt” to the ride, and the next I was flying over the bars.

How do you like that?  Some lazy pre-Civil War-era worker doesn’t clean up after himself and 170 years later I bust my goddamn thumb.  It never would have happened if I’d been on an industry-approved gravel bike.

On the day of the crash, after pulling myself together and straightening my brake hoods with the help of my friend, we’d climbed over the guardrail at this spot and continued the rest of the way on the road.  However, what I failed to appreciate at the time was the delightfully ironic name of the street:

Yeah, I Wendover the bars all right.

But this time, instead of retreating to the road, I went back and rode over the crash site without incident.  As I did this I felt the profound sense of untying a great cosmic knot, and of truing the Wheels of Fate, and thus realigned I followed the trail the rest of the way back to New York City and home:

In 2016, Brooks England celebrates its 150th anniversary by enlisting the cooperation of some of the best bike builders in cycling to work on an unprecedented project creating interpretations of a Brooks bicycle to be produced in limited numbers and sold worldwide.

The programme is called Dashing Bikes and the list of collaborators is impressive. From the veritable Condor, itself a firm fixture in the history of British cycling, as well as that of Brooks’ own history, to Brompton, the brand synonymous with the words “folding bicycle”. Stalwart collaborators Pashley and Moulton are also along for the ride.

But the programme is by no means limited to builders from the UK. From Europe and elsewhere we will see editions from iconic greats like Dario Pegoretti, the great Italian exponent of steel frames, to belt drive innovators Schindelhauer, touring aficionados Tout Terrain, and even CanyonBicycles, who are preparing a very special edition of their futuristic Commuter. One will also find special creations from Achielle of Belgium,Skeppshult of Sweden, Pelago of Finland, toykobike of Japan, the highly-stylish Moustache e-bike from France, and a top-level gravel grinder fromSalsa of USA.

Brompton S-Type

The first collaboration to be released is with Brompton. Brompton and Brooks have a shared passion for detail which is demonstrated in the finishing of this limited edition bike. Featuring copper elements, a moss grey frame and beige extremities, is the unique colourway exclusive to the 150th Brooks anniversary. The design is complemented with Brooks features including a B15 swallow saddle in green and copper, slender grips in green, a copper bell and a Brooks commemorative decal. The limited edition bike will be available as an S Type with 3-speed gear options.

Skeppshult “Lady” Model

To be able to enlist the support of such eminent builders and brands is a testament to the brand’s appeal throughout the cycling world and a fascinating insight into the way Brooks is perceived worldwide. Each model will be featured in a rotating monthly display at the flagship B1866 store in Covent Garden throughout the remainder of 2016, the first event being held 17 March with the display of the Brompton edition.

Brooks have stipulated a single theme that will unite them all. The theme is ‘copper’. The simple rationale is that copper is a versatile and elegant material with which to work, and has long played an integral role in Brooks products. The copper rivet on a Brooks England Saddle, for instance, is as iconic as any other single element of its, or any design. It remains to be seen how each of the builders will interpret this theme, but Brooks is busy preparing special saddles and accessories to complement the special paint schemes, head badges, and other details on the finishing kit of each bike.